Just makes me think of this. I lived across the street of the crash location. I can still imagine all the smoke. Ugh.
If curious who the other guy was and the strange control stick, from the youtube comments:
The guy in the right seat is the owner of the company with the trucks and tracks who hired me. He is
working on his CPL and will be buying a 44 soon, meaning he will be doing this type of flying himself soon. So, kind of an instructional flight even though I was at the controls. I was talking him through what
I was doing a lot of the time and warning him about things that could go wrong at certain points while he felt my control inputs. If he’s going to do it, I’d at least like him to be informed. It also happened to work out that me sitting left seat gave me a better view of the trucks so I could get closer without craning my neck.
Edit: needs Airwolf theme instead of music used. http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DbGWOtvNBXws&start1=0&video2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DlTb_5oPqCys&start2=4&authorName=akbarfazil
This is awesome, i wish i could afford heli lessons.
Do you use simulators for training? I am definitely booting dcs huey after watching this.
This looks pretty tame compared to what it must look like from the helicopter’s perspective on the Dakar rally or WRC. There are often ground based shots where the helo is only 10 feet off the ground, or at road level flying through canyons. Pretty impressive flying.
Check out x-plane - and buy a heli from x-plane.org for 20 bucks. The free ones not so great. I’ve spent hours on it - days even. Would love to fly a real one!
Meh, go NOE with an Army (or any service) Pilot at max forward velocity. That’s terrifying,
B-1B bomber pilots up in North Dakota often had stories of flying at or below hilltop levels at lunatic speeds. The story specs would vary depending upon the alcohol or asshole level.
That’s the way Robinson Helicopter setup the cyclic in their R22. The single cyclic stick is centrally mounted and has a T-bar mounted on top so both front seat positions can use it, that way saving the weight and complexity of having 2. (Never been in an R44 or R66 so don’t know what they look like, they may be the same).
I just watched an interesting video yesterday (with the same type of control stick) of a pilot demonstrating what it’s like to try and fly completely blind.
He did it to answer the question of what happens when a heli pilot gets blinded by a laser, sparked by this picture of the Tahir Square march:
The question was, why can’t a heli pilot just cruise away from the area, even blinded? It’s not like he’s going to hit anything in the air, right?
Ex-Canadian Army here: I used to think sitting on the door frame with feet on the skids for insertion from a Twin Huey was rockin’, until I had the (mis)forture of riding as observer in the back of a Kiowa with no doors and a fearless pilot…
Apparently as long as the rotors stay above the local vegetation, you have enough altitude, and if you go fast enough, your dust/spray appears so far behind you that it’s hard to target you. Or so sayeth the guy with the big grin in the front seat.
I tottered for a bit after getting out. I think it took my balance about 25 minutes to recover.
Don’t watch this helicopter car chase if you worry that jobs for which people spend years gaining proficiency will soon be replaced by semi-skilled people remotely operating glorified toys.
False dichotomy.
It isn’t the case of skilled helicopter pilots or unskilled drone pilots. Many drone pilots are extremely proficient. And drones can go places and do things that full sized helicopter simply cannot, just as full-sized helicopters can do things that small remote controlled drones cannot. There is room for both, but there’s no room for being butthurt about the democratization of aerial photography that drones can provide.
This pilot, and pilots like him are not going to be hired for much longer for this type of work. There’s no comparison between the skill level needed to pilot a helicopter and to control a camera drone. That’s all I was getting at. Bonus points for putting “butthurt” in a rebuttal post, though. Original and classy.
Yes, it was over the top and a bit hasty on my part.
I’m actually really a big fan of skilled helicopter piloting, so I do think I understand where you’re coming from on this. But I’m also a fan of the new abilities that drone copters allow. They get shots that full sized helicopters just can’t, and since they ate orders of magnitude lower in mass small drones are generally a lot safer even though they can still cause damage.
Drones will absolutely own this work. They’re essentially disposable, compared to the cost of even starting up a full-sized helicopter engine. Zero risk to pilot or camera operator. Like you said, more maneuverable and when operated under reasonable safety protocols, should be able to stay in safe, effective positions to do the job, and have a lot less potential for damage when they make an uncontrolled descent or make contact with something/someone. I was just struck by what this transition means to all of the skilled pilots who have likely thousands of hours invested in their craft. I wonder how much scaling up there will be into moving things around, fighting fires, etc. that manned copters now do.
Ex-Canadian Army here, too (1981-'86)! Best memories* are the helicopter rides; way better than the back of a deuce-and-a-half. Except that one time when the pilot put us down on a hill 3km from where he should have. And for… reasons… he couldn’t come back.
Nothing better than looking out the side door and seeing the ground straight below you.
Although I don’t think we ever got as close to the ground as this guy does…
- well, rappelling from Twin Huey was pretty damn cool, too.
I took about 22 hours of training in R-22. Short answer is no, they don’t tend to use simulators during training. Be prepared to simply not “get it” until about 8-12 hours in, when it finally “clicks” and you can hover. And then? Oh man… 
It is, however, dangerous, and expensive. And a lot of autorotations again and again and again. That’s where they shut off the motor that spins the blades. Yeah.
One thing I found during training, it’s actually easier to fly once you’re behind all three controls, versus two of the three. Much easier to feel how they all interact when you’re behind all of them at once.
Yeahhh, no. Fixed wing or I’m GTFOH. Rotary wing people are just…weird.
Hovering kind of rocks, yo
